Our thoughts are powerful. In our minds we can do anything. Making our dreams reality requires the power of believing they can happen. So many people see the glass half empty, but there's no hope in a pessimistic attitude. Life is all about possibility. I've always wanted to start a blog and I've wasted a lot of time thinking about it. But now, I've finally put my thoughts into action, simply, because I can ...

Monday, 3 October 2011

Well, of course I'm depressed today. Life sucks!

When we feel there's no purpose in life, we're going to feel demotivated. Why get up in the morning if we have no desire to do so?

The best is to stay at home, watch television and eat junk food all day. Occasionally, when there's really nothing to watch on all thousand five hundred and twenty channels (exaggerated number because when we're this down, everything is hyperbolic), we can always spend some time wallowing in self-pity and denial. Then we visit the bathroom, find something else to eat or drink and flop down in front of the telly again. By bedtime, if we're not dead, at least we'll be feeling grottier than ever before. Going to bed and sleeping off the ill health may help, but should we wake up the next day feeling depressed all over again we need not worry. After all, life sucks! So, there's absolutely nothing wrong with living like this. We don't need to feel motivated and even if we're totally out of control, we can always go onto Facebook or Twitter and tell the world how bad it really is.

Keeping this in mind, we may as well ask: What exactly are we doing here on planet Earth? Why are we alive? What is there to live for? There’s really more to life than focusing on ourselves. We spend so much time being self-absorbed, we don’t realize that we're sucking the energy out of our own lives. There's the pun: life sucks. Metaphorically speaking, we're doing the sucking. Life in itself is okay. It's what it has always been. I don't think our forefather pioneers went around saying “Life sucks!” as they beat down bushes and fought wild animals to make a happy trail for their families to follow. Do you really think great-great grandma, who stood up at two in the morning to build the fires for breakfast and bake bread and rusks, preserve jam and milk a cow before five gave a damn about herself? She did it for the family. She never had time to say “life sucks!” because she was too busy. She was focused. She had a purpose, a goal and a job. She wasn't busy procrastinating or making excuses for her laziness. And there lies the answer.

We are so self-absorbed, pampering our own needs, feeling sorry for ourselves and sucking the energy out of our own lacklustre lives that we have become lazy and have no desire to do anything else. Yet, we have to because if we want to eat, we have to work. Life forces us to do these things. Even the Bible says if we don’t work, we can’t eat.

So life punishes us to work and the minute we work, we don’t have enough time to be self-absorbed. It’s a vicious cycle.

We want people to feel sorry for us. We want people to drop everything and run to us and empathize. What a terrible life we're having. Never mind if others are having one too. We're too blind to see that! After all, what does it matter? We're self-absorbed. We don't have to reach out and touch lives. We don't have to make a difference. It's not like we're being paid to do that, right?

Well, if life really sucks because we suck, and we want things to change, maybe we should consider the following. Life is not just about ourselves. No man is an island. We are not the only people that are suffering and feeling like this. There are so many people out there that are feeling depressed. If we can heal ourselves from self-absorption and self-pity, and stop looking for attention or approval, perhaps we can step outside and make a difference in another person's life. We really have to reach out and touch a life in order to feel alive. There are five relatively easy steps to making a difference:

Listen. Learn to listen to other people. Here we need to know that when we listen, we're really listening because we're interested in what others are saying about themselves and their lives. We're not listening with the soul purpose of gaining from it. Drop the attitude: “He says ... so what can I say that will make him think I'm …” Remember, it's not always just about us. It's about them too. What are other people saying and how can we make a difference in their lives for them?

Help. Offer to help wherever we can. In doing little things for others, we're focusing our energy on them. We're building relationships. We're learning to care about someone else and not just ourselves.

React positively. We shouldn't wait for compliments or people to say thank you. We should compliment and say thank you. We should learn to praise. If we try to be humble and learn not to be jealous or competitive, we can achieve so much in a single day on a positive level.

Be loyal. When we listen to others, we realize that they have terrible days and bad experiences too. They suffer too. No-one has it easy. The purpose of listening, wanting to help and reacting positively means that we have to remain as loyal as possible. We can't afford to listen to people and help them, only to judge, gossip or complain about them at a later stage. Making a positive difference means we have to put effort into it. We can't reach out and touch a life and then later poison it.

Involvement. Involve those people in our lives. Invite them to dinner or a sports match over the weekend. Be considerate before we involve them. We can't take a rehabilitated alcoholic to the pub now, can we? Show people that we genuinely care. It shouldn't just be lip-service.

Life is what we make of it. It shouldn't make us sweat, but the effort we put into life to make a difference in that horrible job we're doing (just to earn a living) or the relationships we're having with other people, can also make a difference to the way we perceive ourselves and our purpose here on earth. Life is a gift. We should learn to appreciate every minute of it by being focused and being busy.

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About Me

I am a high school teacher. I teach English as a first and second language in a small town in Limpopo, South Africa. I am married and have two children. I've written four books.
1) Pop-In Jay Pomp (children)
2) Mareijke's Courage (adventure romance)
3) The 6th Commandment: Thou Shalt Not Kill (murder mystery)
4) The Power is Yours (teen motivation).
My motto in life is: You are what you constantly think. I live by these words. The thoughts in a person's mind are powerful: they can create, motivate, encourage, disillusion and destroy. The art of thinking lies in the power of a positive attitude. This is the true weapon to success.